Ian Courtenay Johnston

“ Architectural beauty can only be a constructed beauty expressed through the materials, but residing in an almost dramatic counterweight to the material. (Janák, quoted Moravánsky)
The spiritual purpose of architecture was to make this dynamic imaginative creativity manifest. Beyond that it had no social or political or national agenda. Janák expressly denied that architecture should have as its aim any improvement in society, Czech or otherwise: it is an "independent activity that has no obligations except to itself" (quoted, Švácha Architecture . . . 128) . ”

“ In fact, as Columina points out in her analysis of Le Corbusier's attacks on cubism (152) , modernism itself can be identified with revolutions in perception produced, not by shifts in art and architectural styles, but rather by the conditions of living in the large city, where a multiplicity of images constantly bombards the viewer in fragmentary and fractured ways, especially given the increasingly emphasis on seeing things while in motion (in trams and cars, for example, and in films) . ”

“ Lipps made a distinction between the moral satisfaction induced by the objective reality, the meaning of the artefact, and the process of observation, which is different: the observer enjoys something that has an ideal content, an objectified ego. Aesthetic pleasure therefore is identical neither with moral satisfaction nor with merely sensual enjoyment. (Moravánszky)
Some critics of cubist architecture rejected this distinction, seeing in the style (especially in late cubism) mere sensuality, an unhealthy emphasis on mere ornamentation. ”

“ It is precisely this mixture of inside matter and outside space that Cubist facades want to accomplish. . . . The crystal-like creases on the surface are not an extrinsic decoration: The viewer does not differentiate the wall from its ornamentation. The inside of the house, its mass continuously proceeds into the furrows and fractures of the splintery façade. The inside and outside, the matter and space, merge together creating a sense of continuity between the dense material core and the wavering air surrounding it. ”

“ It is a pulsation that appears to be the pulsation of the inner life of the artefact as the observer invests it with a certain kind of activity originating from his own life experience. The entire "life" or content of a work of art is nothing else but Einfühlung, empathy. ”

“ By the end of the nineteenth century, the National Revival had had considerable success in re-creating a Czech culture, building a number of Czech institutions, and fostering a revival of spoken Czech, particularly by emphasizing traditional Czech customs, work habits, artistic styles, folk music, and story telling. ”

“ Modernist Architecture in Prague: Art Nouveau
Architecture in Prague played a central role in the National Revival once the city gained self-government and the Czech political parties won control of the city council and promoted the construction of a number of important civic buildings in traditional nineteenth century historical styles (The National Theatre, 1868–1883, the Czech Polytechnic, 1872–1873, the Rudolfinum Palace, 1876–1884, and the National Museum, 1885–1890) and all sorts of memorials, schools, and commercial buildings (Švácha, Architecture . . . 18 ff) . ”

“ The articulation of the surfaces is of decisive importance because if matter and materials blend with the surrounding open space, the borders of the building disintegrate. If the borders of a building disintegrate, the building itself vanishes. ”

“ The rhetoric of vigor and the whole aesthetic regime it props up has to be understood in terms of this fear of the "bizarre and the original." The heroic male figure—energetic, cool and detached—is the figure of modernity. ”

“ This phase of Czech modernism in art, which introduced Cubist principles and adapted them for local purposes, came to an end with World War I. After the war, in the newly formed republic of Czechoslovakia, the style so popular before the war came under attack in a climate of renewed commitment to social and political causes. ”

“ And though I have only a very limited knowledge of it, I'd say the same of the so-called "cubist" architecture of Prague. . . . My definition of cubism is resolutely narrow: it has little to do with the geometrising style that sent ripples through the entire Western world of art during the teens and developed into art deco a decade later ”

“ The best example is the process of crystallization: the force of crystallization is much more powerful than the weight. (Janák, quoted Moravansky)
For Janák and others reacting against Sezession-style architecture in the years before World War I, the banner of cubism was an important way of calling attention to the need for a new emphasis in the development of a truly Czech style. ”

“ The opening salvo from this camp came in 1895, the same year as the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition, when a group of young Czech artists published a Manifesto of Czech Modernism, a document rejecting an art based on outmoded traditions, "imitation national songs, versified folkloristic baubles," and an exclusive emphasis on national identity (quoted in Sayer 154) . ”

“ The oblique angle of the falling rain is caused by the additional element of the wind; similarly, the snow formations, washouts, ravines, caves, and volcanoes are all positive changes to the previous natural form of the matter. ”